From the diagnostic tools division of the garagelet comes the compression tester – or compression test kit. While there is a danger in gathering so many tools with blow-molded cases that you have to start labeling them in Sharpie or ’70s-vintage DYMO labeler to tell them apart, the compression tester can more than pay for itself with the discovery of one or more dead cylinders. Finding out the car you just acquired is in reality a two-and-three quarters cylinder instead of the advertised four-banger makes the compression tester in kit, or cobbled from swap meet parts form, an essential device for those of us who enjoy finding, fixing, and driving the finest past tense automobiles into the future! Being able to figure out what’s going on in that old engine is the first step in fixing it.
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